


Calistoga

by dieuclaw



Category: Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: M/M, Wine country
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28274079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dieuclaw/pseuds/dieuclaw
Summary: he has a heart as little apt as yoursbut it harbours no complaints, no remorse
Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Calistoga

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a trance between episodes of PIC. Kurtzman, call me!
> 
> (Lyrics are by [Rome, 2016](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4R3jMO9bSU).)

It’s raining.

This is rare, in the dusty wine country north of the Academy and Starfleet Command San Francisco. An hour’s drive on the old highway or a tenth of that by shuttlecraft or a heartbeat by transporter, it’s a popular bolthole for officers and students alike, favored for the weather, for the live oaks and the famous wine.

The land had burned, before, suffering wildfires every summer for decades. It’s hard to imagine that now. Now everything is green and umber, and there are wind turbines on the hills in a perfect grid, monoliths turning in the rain in time to a greater power. The sound is heavy and it sinks into the earth.

It reminds Picard of the bone-deep thrum of _La Sirena_ ’s warp core. One giant engine. He comes here for ill-advised peace and quiet, and between the wind farm and the wind and the rain on the skylight it’s cacophony. The noise scatters his thoughts, leaving him fractured, distracted, trapped in the present. It wouldn’t be a problem, but he was trying to read.

Picard abandons his PADD (and with it, his digital copy of _To Each His Storm_ , a new translation from Romulan courtesy of the Academy library) on the coffee table and searches, a moment, for his slippers. The house has heated floors, but—

The house. It’s a twenty-third-century-style monstrosity, mostly glass, with an open plan and view of the forested hills below. You can’t see any sign of civilization, and the driveway is kilometers of unpaved dirt and all switchbacks and—again, it’s easier to take a shuttlecraft. On the property, there are young redwoods and oaks and fruit trees: apples, citrus, pears, and one absurdly productive persimmon.

Picard had bought the house as a gift to himself years ago for his promotion to Admiral, with the reasoning that if he was going to spend time on Earth, it would be better to do so without having to think about time zones. So, California. He’d made a conscious effort to forget about it in his retirement, but lately he is restless for a change of scenery. He has exchanged one country’s vineyards for another’s.

It is mid-afternoon but it is also December, and the sun is fading behind the thunderhead above. The lone reading light has left the house dark.

“Lights, fifty percent,” Picard says, and the house computer obeys, illuminating the kitchen with a tungsten glow. He pours himself a glass of red, foraging in the cupboards for late lunch and settles on sourdough and an unusual spread Laris and Zhaban had brought back for him from Ireland. On Earth, he avoids replicated food whenever it’s convenient.

Unwilling to go back to his book--possibly the Romulan epic is starting to feel like work, or it’s that the day is passing too quickly and too much in line with yesterday--Picard paces around the perimeter of the window bay, glass in hand, watching the rain.

It is so strange, to be safe, and to be alone.

Of course Picard is neither.

The reflection in the window shifts and cracks like thawing ice, and there is a familiar sound of time stopping, and everything gets a little brighter against the flat December sky. Picard just sighs.

“Hello, Q.”

Q has taken up Picard’s spot on the cream suede sofa. He is resplendent. 

He raises one of Picard’s wine glasses--half-full or empty of Picard’s wine--in greeting like some classical god of the feast. “Here’s to you, _mon capitaine._ Or should I say, _mon prof_? You never told me you took a teaching gig.”

“I would expect you to know,” Picard says wryly.

“You can’t expect me to follow every detail of your meagre little life,” Q snaps back, as though this isn’t exactly what he does when the mood takes him. He swallows the contents of his glass and it refills gradually, poured by an invisible hand. The entity is tense, Picard realizes, waspish in the way of someone forcing themselves to relax. All-powerful and all-seeing, and yet…

The gig is an adjunct position in the Academy’s xenoarchaeology department and his curriculum is concerned with the ethics of time travel and digging at alien burial sites. It’s a healthy mix of philosophy, exosociology, and Prime Directive horseshit, and class is at 0800 on Wednesdays. It’s perfect. Picard tells Q so.

He tells Q, because what else is there to do? He hasn’t seen the entity since the end of the Dominion War.If he is honest with himself, truly honest, he was waiting for this to happen. It is only the two of them there at the house: if Q zaps them to the ends of Nekrit or through time to the French Revolution, well, it’s a weekend. _Liberté, égalité, fraternité._

Speaking of. “Q, why have you taken us out of time?”

“I thought you’d appreciate it,” Q says guilelessly.“I’ll put you back where we started, don’t worry.”

“Where we started?” Picard asks, settling into a wooden accent chair opposite Q. The chair is not really meant for sitting, it’s more of a sculptural piece, but Q is so tall that his boots are well over the arm of the sofa. “Not Farpoint, I hope.”

“No,” Q agrees. “There’s no need to reopen old wounds. We’d never get anywhere.”

“So you’re out for fresh blood, is that it?”

Q swishes his wine around in the glass clockwise, counterclockwise.“My goodness. You are _fatally_ bored, Jean-Luc. And here I thought I was the only one.”

“I…” Picard pauses. Reconsiders his reply and his tone. “I did not expect for you to come here.”

Q shrugs one shoulder. “Well, I’d hate to be predictable. This place isn’t half-bad,” he adds. “Classy. Romantic. It’s better than that freighter you call a starship. How is she, by the way?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, yes, you play the field. Of course.”

“ _La Sirena_ isn’t mine, and she is, actually, a freighter,” Picard says, as seriously as he can. “Rios will be swinging back around at the end of term.”

“So you’ll wander the unknown expanse of the universe with Captain Cristóbal Rios and his motley crew, _”_ Q rolls his eyes, “And you’ll play bounty hunter and cavort with the Borg and single-handedly fail to save the Romulan Star Empire, but what about me?”

“What about Q?” Picard is incredulous. “The omniscient entity with command over spacetime. You could have--stopped by, for, what is this? A social call, whenever you wanted. You…” His face darkens. “You could’ve saved Romulus. Mars. Billions of lives. ”

It’s too much, to remember Data, or Dahj. Better to keep things in abstract.

“But I didn’t,” Q says, as if he forgot to pick up milk at the store. “And you didn’t think to ask for my help until this minute, this _second_ , did you?”

“If I had--”

“You weren’t thinking about me at all.”

“You will forgive me if I was more concerned with Romulus!” Picard snarls. “Q, you disappeared. For seven years I--I was enthralled by you. There is no other word for it. There was never a greater threat to our mission than you, and--” He hates to go on and on about what they both already know.

“And then,” Picard continues quietly, “You… I don’t know, Q, you lost interest.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Jean-Luc. To answer your question, even if you’d asked… supernovas _happen_. The Continuum has more important issues to contend with than the survival of an unevolved species. No matter who their friends are.”

“You are impossible.”

“Thank you. Do you really mean it? I can see you whenever I want?”

“Q.”

“You’ve changed, you know. I like it. It suits you.”

Picard finds he can’t stay angry. He may as well rail against the storm outside. He’s too old, he’s died twice before. All of his rancor, the fear, the mistrust: it’s still there, but it’s like trying to hold quicksilver in his hands. He is no longer the captain of the Federation’s flagship, hasn’t been for a long time now. Indeed, he has less regard for the Federation than the Continuum. Or maybe it’s about equal.

But Q never had much regard for the Continuum either, did he?

“You’ve changed, yourself,” Picard says, leaning back in the chair, reigning it in. “Kathy had an impressive series of tales to tell. You have a son?”

“Picard. Of all the things you could ask--”

“It is good for Amanda to have a friend her own age,” Picard says warmly.

“Yes, q and Q are a riot. They remind me of myself, a few eons ago,” Q nods. “But, really, Picard, you’re not supposed to ask about children on the first date.”

He must have misheard. Picard rubs his forehead where the memory of the Locutus implant is and opens his eyes to see Q still staring at him from the sofa. “I’m sorry?”

“I told you I’d stop by from time to time,” Q says. His glass is empty again, but he doesn’t refill it. “I admit the century got away from me, but, well, it was awkward. I should thank you for dying again.”

“Again,” Picard repeats, carefully, to be sure he understands.

“Third time’s the charm!”

Q snaps his fingers, but nothing changes. There isn’t even a flash.

This is not unexpected, and it is not unwelcome. Picard looks around towards the kitchen floor as if he’ll see himself lying there, but of course he doesn’t. His flesh heart is beating.

“I don’t feel any different,” Picard says, after a moment.

“Don’t look at me.” Q picks imaginary dirt from his thumbnail. “I’ve never died, so I wouldn’t know.”

Picard falls silent, studying the window. The sun is long gone, and rather than the rain he can see the whole room in reverse.Q’s reflection is incorrect, uncanny: the spectrum of visible light does not take to him the way it does to other things. When Picard turns back to him, the entity is sitting up, and he is holding something wet and black in his hands.

“Remember this?” Q tosses the thing underhand and Picard catches it, easily.

“My heart?” There is nothing else it could be. His old duritanium heart is heavy and slick with lubricant, and the articulated chambers shift and click in his grasp. A memory of Starbase Earhart surfaces: a void of blinding, endless white, the smell of ozone and roses. “So it _was_ you, back then. Yes, I remember.”

“A gift,” Q says, ever enigmatic. “Do you remember what I said?”

And again, there is nothing else it could be, nothing else Q could mean. In hindsight it wasn’t a threat, nor was it a promise; it was a confession. Candor is freeing. “You said we would spend eternity together.”

There is a lull where Q just _looks_ at him. It's not the censure of the judge, nor the absolution of God, nor the _I-told-you-so_ that Picard so thoroughly deserves (may we never get what we deserve). It's the look Q gave him, once, in Ten Forward, when Picard said _"To learn about you is frankly provocative,"_ and--

A triumphant synthpop orchestra swells to a greater volume than the house sound system could ever manage, crashing through the windows in a wave of drums and shattered glass.

“Well done!” Q springs to stand on the coffee table and the air around them explodes with confetti and petals as the music howls in harmony and then fades to quiet. “Well _done_ , bravo, wondrous!” He steps off the other side of the table towards Picard, falling to one knee. “Will you, then?”

Impossible sunlight is streaming in and it’s hot as midsummer. Time is rolling on all at once. Picard feels ridiculous, sitting in an unreasonable chair with his literal heart in his hands, looking down at the very young, very ordinary construct of a man before him. Of course Q hasn’t aged a day, all in white with his eyes like quartz, of course he looks like he stepped out of Picard’s personal Golden Age.

“Q, get up,” Picard stands, and without thinking he takes hold of the entity’s arm, pulling him to his feet. It’s like touching heat lightning. “Q.”

“Yes?”

“Eternity is--unimaginable.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Q grins. “You were in for it anyway, you know, but I’d hate for you to waste it as so much carbon. Not when you’re only _just_ starting to be interesting.”

“Q, you aren’t listening to me. Commander Data--”

"Butterflies and all that jazz?" Q is using Data’s voice, and Picard winces away.

“Mortality gives meaning to human life, yes.”

“And it has.” Q’s expression eases, he takes Picard’s face in his hands, delicate, warm. “It will. Do you think it was _easy_ for me to leave you alone? They ought to give me a medal. You wouldn’t have wanted the Continuum involved in Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, Retired’s dog days, you wouldn’t have wanted us to share the credit for the _terroir_ of your wine. You’re so full of _sheer fucking hubris._ ” Admiral Clancy’s voice, this time. Q can’t keep a straight face.

“Pot, kettle, black, Q.”

“You’re welcome for not saving Romulus for you.”

“Q!”

“Too soon?”

“Too soon,” Picard sighs. It’s more like a huff. Q is still holding him.

“If it makes you feel any better, Q can die.”

“What?”

“Oh yes. I don’t recommend it, but it’s a thing. Kathy told you about Quinn, didn’t she?” Q is suddenly serious, and his eyes are set. He takes Picard’s hand in his. “And you remember Amanda’s parents--such a tragedy. _Eternity_ does not mean Elysium. It’s wild out there.”

There is confetti in Q’s hair, and everywhere else. Picard reaches and brushes some of the stuff from his shoulder. “It’s quite an offer, Q. What have I done to deserve this?” he asks, gently. “I am not that important to the continuity of the galaxy--your words, not mine. Explain.”

“I like you,” Q shrugs. “Obviously. That’s all. I can’t explain it.”

And this--the total lack of moralizing or pretense, the absence of fable, is what does it for Picard. He's lost and let go of enough fleeting chances to know when to hold fast. It only took a lifetime to learn.

He sighs again and nods, twice. _“_ Alright. _Á la fin_. _”_

“Just like that?”

Picard pulls away to collect their empty glasses. “I could stand here making up excuses all night--or day, if you really want an argument, but my heart,” he places his heart on kitchen counter, “would not be in it, and I would not believe a word I was saying. More wine?”

He is surprised that Q does not snap everything into place: he waits for Picard open a new bottle, pacing in the mess he’s made of the living room, kicking up petals. Flowers grow where he walks, not beautiful but cacophonous, wild, inbred and tangled. He’s not paying full attention.

Picard is fascinated, watching him. On the _Enterprise_ Q’d always had a preposterous directive and a costume to go with it, communicating exclusively in parables and archaic metaphorical shorthand. For the first time it occurs to Picard that bombast would be a given for a transcendent alien species that builds star systems for fun. He thinks of the Tamarians, and of Data’s keen interest in the holodeck, and most of all, most strangely of all, of fencing with Elnor.

“Q,” Picard crosses his arms, fighting back a smile. “What I meant to say was _yes._ ”

The sun is blazing as though it’s gone nova and Q turns to him. “Well, Jean-Luc,” he says, unfolding a pair of antique, amber sunglasses, “if that’s how it is. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”


End file.
